


A Spider, A Poxhound, A Bag of Corn

by triggernometry



Series: Slice of Afterlife [8]
Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-07 14:31:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16855750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggernometry/pseuds/triggernometry
Summary: There's one rule everyone living out in the Wasteland ought to follow: stay where it's safe after nightfall. Klagohaj knows this, but he still goes chasing after the kid's damn spider pet after it gets nabbed by an enterprising poxhound one night. He's not exactly surprised by what happens next, just disappointed (in himself).





	1. Chapter 1

Full dark settled on the Wasteland a while ago; it'd be more accurate to say it's closer to dawn than sunset now. Booth and Lil Cuss have settled in for the night, but Klagohaj's awake now – or rather, _still_ awake, because truth be told he has yet to actually nod off.

He sits by the half-dead firepit, poking the glowing coals with a stick and watching the spatter of embers flake off and disappear into the sand around the pit. The skyglow hasn't yet dimmed to make way for dawn, so there's a faint greenish luminescence that's almost-not-quite enough to see by.

Around him, the Wasteland is mostly quiet. He can hear the occasional outburst of poxhounds arguing with each other or other Wasteland denizens in the dark, but it's distant and anyway, poxhounds seldom make the effort to trouble a dragon camp.  
  
Something brushes past his elbow in the dark and he starts, biting off a yelp before it can escape him. Eight red eyes gleam back at him, reflecting the skyglow above: Lil Cuss' ashspine widow can't sleep either, apparently.

Klagohaj does not pet the widow, but he doesn't shoo it off, either. He's still not a fan of spiders, but this one hasn't actually been any trouble to him and the kid likes it, so he keeps his displays of revulsion to a minimum.

The widow stretches out beside the coals in the firepit in almost creepily canine display and begins grooming its forelimbs with long, dainty strokes of its mandibles. Klagohaj watches it for a minute, hypnotised, then shakes himself and returns to staring at the dull glow of the coals.

“What a pair we make,” he mumbles softly. The widow does not reply.

Maybe he does, eventually, drift off. Maybe it's just the forgetfulness of sleep deprivation, the way one blink of the eye can seem to last an hour in the temporal displacement of fatigue. One minute, Klagohaj's meditating on just how _does_ a spider keep itself clean, the next minute he's snapped to sudden, sharp awareness by the yip of a poxhound approximately too damn close.

He looks up. He can see the outline of the thing at the edge of the stone and driftwood circle, eyes agleam with their own infernal light and staring lidless right at him. It bobs its head, judging the distance and sizing him up.  
  
Before he can make a move to react, the widow's got to all eights and, through some uncomfortable engine of arachnid design, producing a deeply unsettling hiss that seems to come from everywhere on its body at once.

“Mother's tears,” Klagohaj hisses through his teeth. “Congratulations, y'all're _both_ creepy.” He waves the stick at the poxhound. “ _Get_.”  
  
The poxhound doesn't move. The widow continues its unholy hissing, now creeping slowly toward the edge of the circle and the poxhound beyond it.

“Oh, for--”

Before he can finish that thought, the poxhound leaps forward. He can just about see the widow rear to meet it, mandibles outstretched, and then the poxhound clamps its teeth around the widow and darts away.

With the widow still in its mouth.

“ _Shit!_ ” Despite the shock, he still manages to keep his voice down, mostly on account of how waking up Lil Cuss _now_ seems like a truly _awful_ idea. Klagohaj jumps to his feet and starts after the damn poxhound before he can think twice about it. There's a little tickle in the back of his mind as he crosses the circle and a voice somewhere inside says, _We_ really _'bout to go chasin' down the kid's damn creepy spider pet at this hour?_

He doesn't bother formulating a response, he just keeps going.

He can hear the poxhound better than he can see it in the unlight of the miasma. It yips and barks by turns, occasionally giving a half-aborted yelp as the widow no doubt puts up whatever kind of fight a giant nightmare spider can do. The spider, too, is more heard than seen, giving off what Klagohaj might describe as an unholy insectile chainsaw buzz which will now and forever set the mood for his nightmares.

Some part of him is deeply, uncomfortably aware of straying too far from camp, of being out in he open by his lonesome, without a light source or a gun or even a knife to produce the illusion of security. He doesn't call out after the poxhound or the widow in its jaws, doesn't even curse when his boots find exposed mycelial veins in the soil and trip him up; it's too foolish even for him to make noise out in the open Wasteland night.

Klagohaj doesn't really have a plan for how to catch the poxhound or what to do if he does, he just feels very strongly he ought to not misplace Lil Cuss' horrible spider friend without a damn good reason.

The decision on what to do with the poxhound if he should catch it comes sooner than expected, as the widow manages to wriggle free of the thing's jaws and drop to the ground. The poxhound stops, circles back, and Klagohaj finds himself in the unenviable position of having to grab for the widow and hold it close to his chest like a beloved toy and not like the last thing on the whole red earth he'd want to touch in his life.

The poxhound growls at him and he growls right back. The widow flails in his arms, not quite _at him_ so much as at the general situation, as far as he can tell. Its mandibles brush uncomfortably close to his cheek and it takes a significant amount of willpower not to just scream and throw the spider as far as possible away from him.

“You _get_ ,” he tells the poxhound, still not quite daring to raise his voice much higher than an outraged whisper. “I ain't care _how_ hungry you are, y'can't just _eat_ my boy's _pet._ Now _get!_ ”

This last is said slightly louder, emphasising a sharp kick of his boot for the poxhound's head. It snarls and darts out of range, then backs away, still growling. Klagohaj makes a show of lunging at it to scare it off, and the poxhound turns tail and lopes away into the dark.

“Bringer's sake,” he mutters to himself. “If that damn thing'd bit me you'd've never lived it down, y'hear?” This to the widow in his arms. It's calmed down now, and the urge to scream and throw has lessened along with the intensity of the spider's movements. He's also able to notice other things, too, now the spider's flailing is no longer at the forefront. Like how dark it's getting, and how he has no idea where the hell he is, and how something wet is soaking into the sleeve of the arm holding the spider.

“Haj, you are the stupidest boy that ever was,” he says out loud, taking in the encroaching pre-dawn darkness around him. “Yes, I am,” he agrees.

He decides to focus on first things first. He hunkers down and puts the widow down gentle as he can on the ground. He can feel it sag a little once he's no longer supporting it. He feels around in his pocket, finds a cigarette lighter, a hip flask, a kerchief, and a collection of rocks which Lil Cuss had insisted he keep because they were all extremely interesting in ways only Lil Cuss could figure out.

Klagohaj pulls the lighter out and flicks it to life. The widow flinches, but barely. The firelight isn't much, but it does reflect off the ichor oozing from bitemarks on the spider's back. He flicks the lighter off again.

“Well, I wish I hadn't seen _that_ ,” he mumbles. He pulls out the kerchief and flicks the lighter to life again. “All right, lil buddy,” he says to the widow, “let's you an' me work real hard on makin' sure neither of us dies tonight, cos you an' I both know Lil Cuss ain't ever gonna forgive us our stupidity an' I plan to be remembered for somethin' other than bein' an incorrigible dumbass. You with me, bud?”

The spider says nothing. It's shuddering slightly. Klagohaj sighs.

“I ain't got clue one on how you're supposta fix a spider, but I'mma try my best an' if you'd be kind enough so's not to bite me for my ignorance I'd be much obliged. Yeah?”  
  
He scoots a little closer to the widow and touches the kerchief, very lightly, to where he thinks the wound must be. The spider starts in place but at least doesn't make to move away or bite. He decides to take that as an encouraging sign. He holds the lighter as close as he dares to illuminate the spider's back. He can see the imprint of the poxhound's teeth in the spider's body, just between what he would probably describe as the spider's shoulders if that didn't sound stupid even to his own ears.

He makes a rudimentary bandage out of the kerchief, slips his belt off and loops it around the spider's body to hold the cloth in place and put pressure on the wound – assuming that's a thing that spiders even find helpful for bleeding.

“Now all's we gotta do is figure out where the damn camp is an' then not die between here an' there.” Klagohaj flicks the lighter shut again and lets his eyes adjust to the dark of the Wasteland, as much as is possible. The skyglow is faltering, knocking visibility down from “poor” to “absolutely piss-poor.” On the upside, it means dawn is only a few hours away.  
  
Only.

Klagohaj stands. He tries to relax and focus on scanning the horizon for any kind of dragonmade glow. The embers in the firepit will be too weak to be visible from as far as he's gone, but maybe Booth's bullshit detector's gone off and she lit a lamp to go look for him, or got the fire going because she knows he's out here somewhere, ten seconds away from a meltdown over having strayed too far out into the godforsaken wilderness in the darkest hours of the night.

He doesn't see anything, just the endless sprawl of darkness over the Wasteland.

Or – wait. Whatever dried-up little acorn of a heart he's got left lunges against his breastbone as his eyes register _something_ staring back at him in the dark, an uncomfortably close distance away. His first assumption is it's a wanderer, and the memory of the many-eyed used-to-be-a-skydancer Lil Cuss charmed the other day flashes briefly through his mind. He doubts meeting it a second time outside the stone and driftwood circle would go _quite_ as swimmingly as the first.

Klagohaj bends down, very slowly, and gathers the widow once more to his chest, staring as hard as he possibly can into the eyes of whatever's watching him.

The eyes move, losing the trace of skyglow long enough to wink out and make Klagohaj jump in place. He takes a step back. He can hear something breathing nearby, can just about make out a shadow in motion – scratch that, make it _shadows_ in motion.

Something to his left growls, and he just about falls over from startling too hard and too fast.

Poxhounds. He's surrounded by poxhounds.

“ _Shit_ ,” he breathes.

He holds the widow as tight as he dares, turns tail, and _runs like hell._

The pack behind him gives chase, of course. _Of course_ they do. It's stupid to run, maybe only slightly less stupid than making a play to fistfight a pack of hungry bone-faced dogs in the middle of the night. He opens his wings mid-gallop, feeling the passage of air through what must be a hundred little holes and tears by now, and makes a bid for the air.  
  
Flying in the Wasteland isn't like flying anywhere else, or so he's heard. Go up too high, you hit the miasma – always sooner than you think – and the air gets about as easy to breathe as lead _real_ quick. He's been up there, once, when he was younger and dumber; he'd been the last to come back down out of his gang of fellow miscreants and the price of his foolhardy tenacity had been a week of bloody noses, puffy eyes, a throat almost too tight to swallow even water with, and about as much energy as a dead snake.  
  
Still, he'll take that over discovering exactly how much of him can be eaten by poxhounds before he stops functioning. It's harder to get off the ground from an upright start, clutching a giant wounded spider in his arms, but he manages to get himself out of biting range all the same.

He can hear the pack below and behind him, yowling its collective disapproval. He can't suppress a little thrill of triumph in his chest; he, Klagohaj, came up with a solution to his problem on the spot, _and it worked._

Of course, there's no solution to be had for flying blind in the Wasteland. He tries to gauge his height, to stay low enough to avoid the worst of the miasma while also not accidentally coming into range of an enterprising poxhound or some other, even worse, thing, but it's difficult if not near impossible. The spider in his arms seems unaffected by the flight thus far, though he still holds it as snugly as he can to avoid accidentally dropping it.

He banks and circles back over where the worst of the poxhound yowling is coming from, thinking he might, by some measure of dumb luck, orient himself enough towards home to just kind of stumble over it. So to speak. He flies for what feels like a small eternity with no amount of luck whatsoever, dumb or otherwise.

The thought _Good thing this is the ironin' board of the Crinoline_ crosses his mind at the exact moment he has a near-miss with the vague outline of a megamycelium reaching skyward with its unpleasantly ruffled arms. He swears, clumsily dodging around one mushroom arm only to crash sideways into the firm flesh of another tree's cap-headed branches. Klagohaj instinctively twists mid-air, angling himself so as to take the impact with his shoulder rather than his chest, where the spider's still nestled. He feels his wing bend uncomfortably against the megamycelium's unforgiving hide, and he falls.

He doesn't _quite_ hit every cap on the way down, but it feels a little bit like it. Klagohaj lands on his back in the dirt. He coughs. His grip on the widow falters and it skitters off of his chest and into the dust beside him. He manages to look at it, but can only make out the fact that it's moving and little else about its condition.

He forces himself to sit up. He's still a minute, taking stock of how he's feeling and listening for the sound of the poxhound pack. It's quiet. His shoulder hurts like hell, the one wing seems to not yet be on speaking terms with him again, and his back has had better days. But he's alive ( _well--_ ), and probably not broken anything – although, he once broke his hand by punching one of Booth's marks too hard and didn't even notice until much later, so he'll reserve judgment for the time being.

He turns to look at the widow. “How we feelin', bud?”

The spider doesn't answer, but it does move at the sound of his voice. He runs a hand over it gently, feeling for – well, something out of the ordinary, he supposes, who knows how spiders do? It seems fine, all things considered. He decides that the spider is fine. For now.

He picks himself up and immediately barks his head on a low-hanging mycelial arm. “Oh, for--” He rubs his head and glares up at the ruddy shadow of the megamycelium he's standing under. “The hell'd _this_ even _come_ from?”

He looks around, trying – vainly – to get a grasp of the landscape around him. He can make out the outlines of more megamycelia, their silhouettes breaking up the vague swirl of the dark miasma overhead. The megamycelia are themselves a clue as to his location, albeit a bewildering one. The mushroom trees are more common the closer you get to Sourwater – but Klagohaj finds it difficult to imagine his flying bid to escape the poxhounds took him _that_ far.

Did it?  
  
His eye lands on what he first thinks is the horizon with a hint of sun coming up over it – but that can't be right. For one thing, the sun's usually way _bigger._ For another, it doesn't … flicker, like that. Klagohaj scoops up the spider and starts toward the line of glow seemingly coming from the ground on the other side of the copse of mushroom trees. It's definitely not the camp but It has to be _something,_ and Klagohaj definitely feels like his luck needs to turn right about now.

He picks his way carefully to the light source, edging around mushroom treetrunks and letting the toes of his boots slide forward to give him a feel for any roots, rough terrain, and rocks that might trip him up. As he homes in on the light source, he realises the ground here drops off into a short slope – only about as tall as he is long, maybe. At the bottom of the slope is a clearing, ringed around by more megamycelia.

At the center of the clearing is a campfire, a collection of traveller's gear, a stool, and a figure sitting on that stool. The figure, Klagohaj realises, is singing.

The voice is old, and scratchy, and the nearer he gets the more he can pick out colourful slang words and descriptions of activities he's not sure _he's_ old enough to know about.

Klagohaj hesitates. The singer hasn't yet spotted him. He makes one last sweep of the horizon for literally anything else even half as useful as this campfire and this singer, and then takes a deep breath.

“Hello?”

The singer falls silent. They reach into the depths of their clothes – which appear to be numerous in a variety of layers – and draw out a beat-up old torchlight. They aim the business end at him and click it on. Bright light blinds him, and he almost stumbles while recoiling from it, cursing under his breath.

There's a pause while the stranger sizes him up and he does his best to reclaim any vision whatsoever. The beam of light lowers to somewhere around his boots and he's able to look more or less in the stranger's direction. They reach up with their free hand and pull back their chimera-head hood, revealing a wizened old tundra's face with a thick, braided beard gleaming with what must be right around a hundred beads.

“Boy, you got some nerve sneakin' up on folks in the pit of night like that,” the tundra says. Then she laughs. “Hell, son, what've you got _there?”_

Klagohaj remembers the widow in his arms. He looks down at it; it's still alive, at least, though he can't tell if it looks better or worse. “Wouldja believe me if I said it was my boy's pet?”  
  
“I would. I've met a child before. You live nearby?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “I think – got myself turned around chasin' after _this_ cuss in the middle'a the night with no forethought, which is how I'd characterise mosta the trouble I get myself into.”  
  
The tundra laughs again. It's a rough, grating sound but nonetheless warm with real mirth. “And now you're out here sneakin' up on folks lookin' to get sprayed with lead.”

“That's about the long an' short of it, yes,” Klagohaj says. “Didn't mean to sneak up on you none. I just saw the firelight an' came lookin' for a safe spot to wait for the dawn in.”

The tundra clicks the torchlight off and stows it away in her voluminous layers. “I s'pose it'd be unfriendly of me to deny a lost traveler a seat at my campfire. C'mon on down, bring y'boy's pet.”  
  
Klagohaj feels a significant rush of relief flood his body and nods gratefully. He lowers himself down onto his backside and slides on down the slope as careful as he can. The smoke from the fire stings his skin as he passes through a bank of it: cedarwood fire. Useful for keeping the spooks and wanderers at bay. Being himself a terror of the night, technically speaking, cedarwood does have an effect on him – though usually nothing more serious than a headache after long enough exposure. He'll live, so to speak.

The tundra's already moving by the time he reaches her. She shuffles over to a pair of very large traveling baskets adorned with a variety of utensils and smaller bags on their wicker sides. She unties a smaller bag from a basket and gestures for Klagohaj to come closer.

“You smoke?” she asks him, holding up a box of cigarettes.  
  
“No'm,” he says. “But I got a light.” He holds the lighter out for her to take and she makes an appreciative sound, lights a cigarette, and passes the lighter back to him. She takes a long puff, letting smoke slip languidly between her teeth and through her nose. Her canine teeth gleam in the firelight: metal-capped. He can just about make out the etchings on the enamel.

“Uh, you got any idea whereabouts we are?” Klagohaj asks. The tundra nods.

“You know Chatterhaw?”  
  
Klagohaj is quiet a minute, thinking her answer over. Of course he knows Chatterhaw – it's the skeleton of a ghost town on the outskirts of Sourwater Springs. Somebody once told him the place had been a small trading community made up of a couple of large families looking to make their mark on the map as some kind of big-time settlement. They'd done well enough, he heard, until their heads of households got replaced by skin-stealers and the rest, well – everybody knows what happens after skin-stealers show up.

“But that's...” Klagohaj trails off, looking at the tundra with open confusion.

“Sourwater Springs,” she says, nodding. “I take it the Wasteland took you farther'n you anticipated?”

Klagohaj nods. “Yes'm, you could say that.”

“Happens. Ain't nothin' to be done about it just yet. That hurt?” She gestures with the cigarette toward the widow in his arms.

“Yes'm, I think so.”  
  
“Well,” she says, “let's have a look at it, then. Your boy's gonna be sore disappointed if he wakes up to a dead pet.”  
  
The tundra clamps the cigarette between her teeth and gestures with both hands for Klagohaj to hand the widow over. The spider twitches sluggishly as it passes between them, eyeing the tundra with neither fear nor curiosity. She lays the spider out gently on the lid of one of her baskets, unbuckling the belt from around its middle and peeling away the kerchief.

“Poxhound got it?” she asks him. Klagohaj nods.

“Damned thing hopped right into camp an' grabbed it 'fore I could so much as blink,” he says.

“They been gettin' bolder of late. Dried blacktongue pepper in the dirt 'round your camp, if you've got it. Stings their feet an' gets 'em all distracted.”

The tundra roots around in her many clothing layers, then draws out a small vial of something that shines blackish in the firelight.

“Poxhound bites ain't so bad on their own,” she continues, “it's the infection what gets you later.” She dampens a square of scrap cloth with the vial's contents and begins cleaning the spider's wound. “I can't say as I've had the opportunity to use this on a spider before, but it works a treat on the rest of us.”  
  
Klagohaj watches her tend the spider, impressed by how little the spider's obvious horribleness seems to trouble the tundra. She hums as she works, occasionally speaking softly to the widow as she introduces it to a variety of salves and a fresh bandage – this time made out of a real roll of gauze and not just the first absorbent material at hand.

“Well, now the rest is up to you,” she tells the spider, picking it up off the basket lid and setting it down gently on the ground. She gives it a pat on its head, between its cluster of eyes. “You hungry?”

It takes him a minute to realise she's not talking to the spider. He starts, eyes snapping up from the widow to the tundra.  
  
“No'm.”  
  
She eyes him thoughtfully a minute, then nods. She roots around in her vast assortment of gear until she's able to draw out a large enameled coffee pot.

“You like your coffee barefoot or shod?” she asks him, emptying a water skin into the pot. There's a rough crinkle of paper as she shakes coffee grounds into the pot and sets it on the fire to cook.

Klagohaj's eyebrows rise. “You got _coffee_?”

“Couldn't cross the Deep Country without it,” she says. “I know some folks in Rachidian, where they grow the beans.”

“You been all the way up there?”

“Sure, been all over.” She hunkers down to put the cigarette stub out against the sand and disappears it into a pocket somewhere on her person. “Barefoot or shod?” she asks again.

“Oh, uh – barefoot, please.”

She nods. She stands and returns to her traveling basket. Beside her basket, the ashspine widow is very slowly, very carefully beginning to delicately groom its forelegs. Klagohaj decides to take that as a good sign. The tundra draws a matching pair of tin mugs from the basket and pauses to examine the widow before returning to sit by the fire.

“Looks like your little friend there's doing better already,” she says. “Memaw's balm usually puts folks to right if they ain't already a mile from dead.”

Klagohaj blinks. Then he blinks again. “Memaw?”

“That'd be me,” the tundra says, coming to a stop beside the pot on the fire. “Well, it's what folks call me. Memaw Magdaw.” She shifts the mugs around in her grip, leaning over enough to offer her hand. “Just Magdaw's fine.”

“Haj,” he says reflexively, shaking her hand slowly as if in a dream. He can't stop staring at the tundra. “ _You're_ Memaw Magdaw?”

“The same. Take it you heard'a me?” The tundra gives him an amused, appraising look.

“ _Heard_ –! You hit Sterling Six-String upside the head so hard she lost her ear for _music,”_ Klagohaj blurts out before he can think twice about the implications of knowing that particular story. Sterling had been Daur's right hand and the gang's chief musical entertainment around the nightly campfire. A slight spiral with a fondness for hunting knives and her banjo – and maybe Daur, too, if there was ever any merit to the talk.

Magdaw stares at him for a minute before throwing her head back in a loud laugh. “That little shit,” she says. “She'd been no end of trouble for those Waysign kids.”

“Well, she damn well left 'em alone after _that_ ,” Klagohaj says.  He had only been around to see the aftermath of Sterling Six-String's last attempt to hustle the Waysign outpost keepers: the spiral with an eye black and swole-up big as a melon, and one ear crumpled up against the side of her head like a sad old leaf. She really _had_ lost her ear for music, though she managed to get through most of the gang's favourites by pure muscle memory alone. Daur hadn't been too sympathetic; Klagohaj had got the feeling whoever this “Memaw” was, the gang was to leave them _well_ alone.

“You run with her?” Magdaw asks. Her expression is still amused, albeit gone a little harder around the edges with an assessing look.

“No'm.” Klagohaj shakes his head. “That life's behind me. Heard that whole bunch got got anyhow, ain't much left to run with anymore even if I had the mind for it.” Whatever remains of his self-preservation instinct keeps him from so much as cracking a smile at his own choice of words.

Magdaw eyes him a minute more and then nods, apparently satisfied by the answer. The pot on the fire grumbles and she tugs a kerchief from her neck to drape over the handle and move it off onto the sand. She lets the pot sit a minute before pouring them both coffee.

Klagohaj sniffs the contents of his cup. _Real_ coffee. He's had it before, mostly while schmoozing with the more serious gangs in the Mother's Teeth. Since Booth showed up, coffee's been a next to nonexistent commodity, and he's made do with dried chicory root and imagination.

“How old's your boy?” Magdaw asks him. She's got her cup in one hand and a roll of heavy-looking cloth in the other, which she shakes out one-handed and spreads out over the dirt beside the fire – on the side opposite the way the smoke's trailing, he notices gratefully. She gestures for him to sit and he gives a thank-you salute with his cup before sitting. She returns to her perch on the stool.

“Coupla days only,” Klagohaj says. He blows on the mouth of his cup, watches tendrils of steam drift away and disappear against the dark beyond the fire.

“Your first?”

“Yes'm.”

Magdaw gives a long, low exhalation and fishes around once more in her layers of clothing, this time withdrawing a small silver flask. She opens it with practiced ease one-handed and leans over to pour a couple splashes of its contents into Klagohaj's coffee.

“That to congratulate me or to fortify my spirits?” Klagohaj asks, eyeing the flask with eyebrows raised and face split in half a grin.

“Yes,” she says, tipping the flask over her own mug before returning it to its hidden pocket somewhere on her person.

He pauses with the mug halfway to his face to avoid snorting a laugh right into it and spilling coffee everywhere. Magdaw flashes him a grin.

“I'm kiddin', of course,” she says. “Children make you weep for joy and a broken heart both but you'll never want to trade it for nothin'.”

“You got kids?”

“A couple here and there.” She takes a pull from her mug and lets out a soft _ah_ as she swallows it down. “I never got the taste for settlin' down, and they surely did take after me in that regard.”

Klagohaj takes a drink. The coffee is dark and bitter, sharp around the edges from whatever was in that flask. He feels a brief stab of regret at not being currently alive to really enjoy the taste – but it's still pretty damn good even to a dead dragon's tongue.

His eye falls on the ashspine widow, still grooming itself with its awful, terrible mandibles. He hopes it's not just wishful thinking on his part that the spider looks better; having poxhounds take turns gnawing the spines off his head sounds preferable to having to tell Lil Cuss his awful, terrible pet up and died.

“It's gonna be all right.”

He looks up; Magdaw is watching him over the rim of her mug with a careful, considering eye. She tilts her head almost imperceptibly in the direction of the widow.

“Even if the worst happens,” she says, “he ain’t gonna stop lovin’ you.”

Klagohaj opens his mouth, then closes it again. His throat feels suddenly tight and anyway, he hasn't got the thoughts in his head to muster a reply to _that_. He just nods and hopes the half-smile he gives the old tundra looks grateful and not especially pathetic.

They fall into silence then. It's not an awkward silence, surprisingly. The fire crackles quietly to itself, and somewhere – far enough away to be safe, this time – poxhounds whoop and yip across the dwindling night. The tundra quietly refills their mugs when they empty them.

When the coffee’s all gone, Magdaw leaves her seat by the fire to shake the leftovers from the pot out over the sand at the edge of the firelight. When she shuffles back, she reaches out to touch Klagohaj's shoulder gently with the tip of two fingers. He turns.

“Sun'll be up soon,” she says. She gestures upward – sure enough, the miasma is growing lighter around the edges, blanching ashy green with the barest hint of red along the horizon.

“That'll be my cue to get on outta your hair,” Klagohaj says, getting to his feet.

He gulps down the remainder of his coffee – now much cooler than it was before – and holds the mug out for the tundra to take. She gives it a few stern shakes over the sand to get the excess moisture out and then leaves both mugs to hang on hooks along the outside of her traveling basket.

“Ma'am--” Klagohaj starts. Magdaw holds up a hand. “--Magdaw,” he amends. “I just mean to say thank you for your hospitality, is all.”

“Of course,” she says. “What else we keep neighbours for?”  
  
Klagohaj's not so sure she counts as a neighbour – well, by Wasteland standards, maybe. He crosses to the widow, hunkering down to get a closer look at it. He's pretty sure it's looking at him with much clearer eyes than it had earlier.

“You and your friend gonna make it back all right?” Magdaw asks. “I don't mind actin' tourguide if you need it.”

“Oh, gettin' home ain't gonna be a problem now,” Klagohaj says. He takes a deep breath, then – gently – gathers the spider up in his arms. It's still the last thing he wants to do in this whole wide world, but at least the spider doesn't seem to mind much. He stands, cradling the spider so its mandibles are angled _away_ from his face, and turns to Magdaw. “I'll take anythin' you got for the undyin' shame of gettin' lost on your own home turf half the night if you got it, though.”

She laughs and claps him on the shoulder with one well-weathered paw. “Son, I'm old _,_ ” she says, “not a miracle worker.”


	2. Chapter 2

There are no two ways about it: Haj is missing.

Booth sits on his favourite stump beside the firepit that was stone cold well before she even thought about waking up and gnaws on a fingernail. 

She’d been up just before dawn, woken by the persistent echoes of dreams too indistinct to recall with any fidelity. Lil Cuss'd been curled up precious as a pearl right beside her, tail coiled around his feet and one arm draped over his tiny snout, all eyes closed and letting out a snore about as loud as a baby sparrow's. Booth had slipped out from under the blanket quiet as anything and pulled it up gently, gently over the child before slipping soundlessly out of the tent.

At first, Haj not being immediately in evidence isn't weird, per se. It's not like him to wander, exactly, but sure, she can imagine he'd gone to stretch his legs, or something.

Maybe not an hour before sunrise but. Sure. She can _imagine._

Then she notices the spider is gone too. That’s probably not weird, either. It’s a wild animal, after all. Probably. It hasn’t left the boy’s company since he brought it home but it’s still a wild animal. Unpredictable. The spider being gone is _not_ weird.

Probably.

She scans the horizon, willing the sun to get its ass in gear faster. She fishes out a strip of dried podid to gnaw on, stares at the horizon some more, gnaws at the podid jerky until it's gone, too distracted to really notice how little drying helps with the taste of podid. 

She stays sitting a while longer, trying not to let her thoughts run too far ahead of her.

Haj is out stretching his legs. Probably. 

In the dark. For a _while._

_Maybe he left,_ a small, quiet voice in the back of her mind says. _Good for him._

The sun climbs laboriously upward behind the curtain of miasma. It’s finally light enough to really see by. 

She stands, paces from the stump to the edge of the circle and back again, trying to marshal her thoughts into a plan of action. Her eye lands on the hat she hadn't noticed before resting on the ground beside the stump.

It's Haj's hat.

She picks the hat up. She feels the myriad holes for his spikes, runs her fingers along the worn edge of the brim. She's seen that incorrigible owl hoot run through a shootout to get this hat back; he wouldn't just _leave_ it, not without what he'd consider a good reason.

Booth's thoughts turn as one, trying to home in on what could be a _good reason_ in this case. None of them good. So to speak. She puts the hat down on the stump and makes another round around the camp. If she squints hard enough, she can make out tracks leading away from Haj’s stump to the Wasteland beyond the stone and driftwood circle. Some scuffs in the dust; something that could be a poxhound track or just her imagination.   
  
Nothing useful. Nothing _definite._

She pokes her head back into the scrap-tent; Lil Cuss' breathing is rhythmic, deep. Booth crosses through the flap and into one corner of the scrap-tent, where she keeps an old steamer trunk full of odds and ends. She hovers over it for a while without moving, indecisive, torn between just going back outside to find something to occupy herself with and giving in to the pacing worry she feels wearing a hole in the floor of her heart.

Not knowing is worse than knowing, she decides.

She cups her palms against the locks of the trunk one at a time to muffle the sound of the latches popping up. Inside the trunk is a collection of some clothes, a few books, ropes, jars, and various other supplies, a burlap sack containing her pearl, and a scrying mirror wrapped loosely in an old scarf that’s seen better days. Booth pulls the mirror out and closes the trunk quietly.

She heads back outside. It’s even brighter out here now. How much time’s she been wasting just standing around worrying? _Foolish._

She moves around the scrap-tent and hunkers down in its shadow. Full dark is best for this kind of thing, but she hasn't got the luxury of waiting until sundown comes back around. She lays the mirror face-up on the dirt and crouches over it, shielding it from light with her wings and body. The frame is dark wood the colour of deep Plague soil, studded with the teeth of a dozen grandmothers before her. The mirror itself is black as the void, smooth as a river stone: ichor tainted with blood to discolour it and make it never quite set and harden to true pearl.

She takes a deep breath and drags a finger over the frame until the teeth dig in and pierce. She presses her hand against the mirror’s face, feels it sink into the sleek blackness, feels something press back, draw the blood from her finger, and recede again.

She closes her eyes and focuses on the shape of a single red eye dozing against its setting of old black leather and hair.

_Open._

She opens her eyes and withdraws her hand from the mirror. The black void of uncured ichor is now the Crinoline horizon, catching fire with a feverish orange-green light from the rising sun directly ahead. The view is framed by something she has to squint hard to recognise: spider legs. She leans in close to the mirror, staring and listening with all her might. She can hear Haj's voice, coming from somewhere up above the mirror's point of view. He's talking so softly she can hardly make out the words. She grips the edge of the mirror tightly and suppresses the urge to lift it up and shake it with impatience.

“Where _are_ you, _”_ she whispers. The view twitches, flicks from one side to the other. She sees the half-lit Crinoline stretching in all directions; sees the boy's ashspine widow in Haj's arms. It has – a bandage? The view flicks forward again, and with a start she recognises the outline of the scrap-tent, viewed from –

“All right, bud, just like we talked about,” Haj's voice from the mirror says, now clearer and louder than before.    
  
–  directly behind her.

Booth turns. She could laugh, if her throat weren't already full of her own heart: _there he is_ , like he's stepped straight out of a picture, widow in his arms, lit up with the morning filtering through the miasma.

She lunges to her feet and breaks into a run before she's even thinking about it.

“ _Haj!_ ”

He's close enough now for her to make out the way his mouth forms a perfect _Oh, fuck_ as he registers the sight of her. He stops, takes one half-step back, holds up the spider like it's divine decree and meat shield both. Booth darts in under his arms to wrap her own around the middle of him and hold tight. The impact of her body against his makes him stumble a little bit, and he lets out a little _oof_ as whatever air he'd drawn in to speak with gets knocked out of him.

“Uh,” he manages finally. His posture is stiff and awkward, tense. “You – uh, you all right, Booth?”

“Am _I_ – are _you_ all right? Where were you?” Booth lets go enough to straighten up and meet his eyes.

“Here an' there an' a little bit of everywhere, feels like,” Haj says. He lowers the spider enough for her to get a look at it. “Got myself a wounded soldier here for which I had to go visit a livin' legend to get patched up so if you're gonna whup my ass I'd prefer if you waited 'til I got it situated.”

“What – are you talking about,” Booth says.

“I ain't slept in about a life, so I ain't rightly know, tell the truth.”

“You hurt?”

Haj gives a surprised little yelp as Booth slips her hands under his vest, feeling around for missing pieces under his shirt. The yelp bleeds into a low laugh and he stares down at her with one eyebrow raised. 

“ _Madam_ ,” he says with comical seriousness, “we reserve our passions for the _nighttime hours._ ”

“Shut up,” Booth says. “Are you hurt?”

“Am I supposta answer that?” Haj's grinning, clearly enjoying himself on some level. She fixes him with a level look and he sobers a bit. “No'm, I am not hurt. Bit banged up. I hit, oh,” – he makes a show of counting in his head – “I reckon 'bout three hundred fifty different mushroom trees on my way down from bein' cocky an' flyin' blind.” He inclines his head to the widow.  “Creepy-crawly here got the worst of it, but it'll pull through – I think.”  
  
“What happened?”

“Uh.” Haj gives the spider in his arms a thoughtful look. “Well, that there is surely a tale.” 

Booth makes an impatient nod with her head and he takes a deep breath. 

“ _So_ , 'bout two hours 'fore dawn this poxhound shows up an' steals the god damn spider, right, an' I ain't lettin' no mangy good-for-nothin' steal Lil Cuss' spider no matter _how_ awful it is an' so I run after it an' _don't_ get et by the whole pack but I _do_ get lost as all hell an' _then_ \--” He pauses, catching sight of the impatience Booth can feel on her face. “Long an' short is I been walkin' back here ever since. Basically. I did meet a livin' legend an' she gave me some real coffee but I don't figure you'd find that too excitin'.”  
  
Booth stares at him. “You got lost?”

Haj lets out a long breath through his teeth and narrows his eyes resignedly. “Sure,” he says. “Yuck it up while you can.”

“You got lost,” Booth says again. Repeating it doesn't make it make more sense. She looks from him to the widow. “Chasing that _._ ”

“Well, the poxhound in the mouth'a which friendo here was joyridin' _teck-nick-lee_ speakin', but yes.”  
  
Booth tries to square it in her mind: Haj got honest to gods _lost_ , and was not, in fact, running out or stolen or whatever else her mind was not two seconds ago _entirely sure_ was the case.

“All right,” she manages, finally. “Good.”

“ _Good.”_ Haj gives her a long look. “How's that good?”

Booth shakes her head and waves him off with a dismissive hand. “Doesn't matter. Boy'll be up soon, if he ain't already; time to get breakfast on.”

“Breakfast,” Haj echoes. He's still staring at her, now with more obvious bewilderment. “You ain't mad?”  
  
She tilts her head, regarding him quizzically.  
  
“I 'unno, I just – I just figured, is all.” Haj sounds increasingly less sure the more he says. He drops his gaze, all traces of confidence very suddenly drained from him.

“No, I –“ Booth's throat clicks drily as she swallows. “I was— well. Saw you'd left your hat behind and figured the worst.” She does not elaborate what _the worst_ could mean in this case. Detailing the finer twists and turns of her thought processes over the course of the morning seems unnecessarily self-incriminating. “Good to see you in one piece, I mean.”

That surprises an amused snort out of him and he meets her eyes again. “You were _worried_.” He sounds legitimately surprised.  

Booth gives him a withering look and his face splits into an excessively pleased grin.

“You _were_. Why, are you gettin' _soft_ on me, Miss Booth?”  
  
Booth shakes her head at his increasingly wide grin and turns to start back for the scrap-tent. She can hear the shuffle of his boots in the dust as he falls into step behind her, and then the low pitch of his voice as he most likely leans over conspiratorially to talk to the spider in his arms: “You see that, bud? Now I _know_ she gettin' soft on me 'cause she ain't smacked me three ways to sundown for callin' her _Miss_.”

Booth has to concede that that is, technically, accurate.


End file.
